Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
MAIA
“Don’t plant that there,” Maia grumbled, trying to grab the herb out of Birger’s hand. It was a very delicate breed of parsley that somehow didn’t mind growing underground, and the damn thing was the only plant giving the food flavor down here. She would not allow him to plant it anywhere that would risk its life.
“This is where it goes.”
“Maybe so, but it doesn’t want to go there.”
Birger lifted it over her head, far out of her reach, but she still jumped trying to get to it. Maybe if she stretched just a little higher, she could grab it out of his hands and take off with the poor thing. The longer she was in the garden, the more she’d learned to listen to the plants talking. Birger was a good teacher when it came to using her magic, but he was terrible when it came to listening to the plants.
“Why doesn’t it want to go there?” he challenged. “This is a good place for parsley. The wisps gather here more than anywhere else. The soil is good. There’s nothing wrong with this spot. You’re just giving in to a picky plant. You can’t do that so much when they don’t know where they need to go.”
“They know exactly where the best place for them is,” she grunted. “This soil is too acidic!”
“It’ll do just fine here. It just has preferences like you do. If you let them all tell you where they want to be planted, they’ll be clustered around each other and none of them will grow.” Birger gave her a glare. “You’re letting the magic make choices for you.”
“No, I’m listening to them, which you are not very good at. Give it here.”
He grunted, then gave her his back as he planted the parsley where he had originally wanted to. “And here I was thinking that human women were meek. You’re worse than the squirrels up there. Always nattering about nothing.”
Her heart skipped a beat. Maia hadn’t ever been told that she talked too much. She was always the quiet girl in the corner, praying no one would look at her, and when they did, she would hop to do whatever they wanted. Knowing that here she was more than that? It filled a hollow deep inside of her that had wanted to be the opinionated woman who lived in her head.
Biting her lips, she grinned as she returned to her plot of the garden, pausing only when a shadow fell across her neat row of holes that were ready for more plants to sink their roots into the soft earth.
Looking up, her lips parted in surprise. “Ragnar?”
“We’re needed.” He stared down at her with troubled eyes, and she could sense something had happened.
She hadn’t felt another earthquake, though. Were her people attacking right now? Maia didn’t know if she wanted to be in the middle of a battle between the trolls and the humans, especially not when it was so easy for someone like her to get lost in the midst.
He grabbed her arm, hauling her up to her feet and nodding at Birger. The other troll said nothing as he watched them leave, but anxiety churned more and more in her belly as Ragnar drew her away from the garden. He wasn’t leading her toward home, though. He was leading her into the forest.
Were they leaving?
“Ragnar?” she asked, breathless already as she tried to keep up. “Where are we going?”
He didn’t reply. Not until they were so far into the strangely colored forest that she knew she wouldn’t have been able to get back if she tried. There were no footprints to follow, and certainly no path. He’d walked between the trees like he knew them by heart, and perhaps he did.
But finally he stopped, whirling on her and stalking back in her direction. She stumbled away, slamming her back into a tree as he loomed above her.
“Ragnar?” she tried again.
She couldn’t read that expression on his face. He looked angry, and normally she knew why he was. But he’d taken her out of the garden, hurried her away from Birger and the job he’d given her, only to bring them right into the middle of the woods where no one would find them.
Maia watched with wide eyes as he sank to his knees before her. He was breathing hard, but she didn’t think it was because he was tired. Instead, his gaze slid down her neck, her chest, to the core between her legs that instantly burned with desire. The feeling of his gaze was like a physical caress long before he actually touched her, those claws gliding up her thighs, catching on the fabric of her skirt and drawing it up.
“Wife,” he said, his voice a low guttural groan. “I have need of you.”
Her breath caught. “You do?”
“I don’t know if we'll return alive from where I need to bring you, so I wish to taste you one more time.” And then he leaned closer, pressing his nose against her lower belly, breathing in deeply. “I wish to do more than that if you’ll allow it.”
If she would...
Oh.
Oh.
She could make him wait, but she didn’t want to. She’d been burning for him for so long, and even if it was wrong, she wanted this troll. Maia wanted to feel him between her thighs, to hold on to that broad, strong back and cry out with pleasure like he’d made her do already. She wanted to hear his moans of desire and know what it was like when he seated himself fully in her.
Even if that was terrifying. Even if she had questions whether or not they would fit. She wanted to try.
Tangling her fingers in his hair, she gave the locks a tug. “Consume me, husband.”
It was like she had unleashed an attack dog. Suddenly, he was everywhere. His fingers pinched her hardened nipples through her dress, creating a friction that was equally wonderful and maddening. He surged toward her, his tusks scraping up her chest to her neck, where he growled into her ear. The hard bar of his cock pressed against her lower belly, and she was so disoriented she didn’t even think about the size of it.
His mouth opened, teeth clamping down on her neck in a claiming bite that had her squirming. She couldn’t move, not even if she wanted to. There was so much control in those jaws. He told her without words to stop moving as he reached between her skirts and moved them out of the way. Those long, blunt fingers found the core of her, sliding through her folds with ease.
Cool air joined his fingers, brushing between her thighs and making her see stars. She blinked her eyes open, not sure when she’d closed them, only to see the monster of him right before her. Heaving chest, massive muscles bared and ready for war, mountains of flesh that were all hers for the taking. She spread her fingers wide across his chest, trying to feel as much of him as she could.
He released his hold on her throat with a deep groan before grabbing her waist and heaving her up. The dress protected her from the tree’s rough bark, but now she was even higher. She wouldn’t be able to stand if he put her down, but perhaps that was the point. Ragnar hooked her legs around his shoulders, and then he was between her legs again, his head buried beneath her skirts, and then there was his tongue .
That broad, flat tongue plunged into her softness. He licked and sucked, teasing her with the flat of it. He knew what she liked already. He knew how to torment her, how to make her buck against his mouth like a wanton creature. She lost herself in the warmth of him. The heat of his tongue, the way he seemed to salivate at the taste of her. Her own wetness slid down her thighs, and she squeezed his shoulders to keep the feeling of him just a little longer.
He turned his head, biting her thigh hard enough to make her squeal before he plunged two fingers inside her.
“There’s not as much time as I’d like,” he said against her thigh. “I would’ve been gentler with you. Stretched you. Made sure you were ready for me.”
“I am,” she whimpered, even though she wasn’t entirely sure what she was agreeing to. “I want you, Ragnar.”
She’d never felt so empty in her life. Clenching around his fingers, she needed more than just those. Even as he plunged them in and out of her, even though he curled them in on that spot that made her see stars, it wasn’t enough.
She wanted him rutting against her, grunting and groaning with her. She wanted to be pressed against this tree, incapable of even forming words.
“Come first, fire hair,” he said, and then his tongue joined in with his fingers. Flicking and sucking and circling her clit until she didn’t know which to focus on—his fingers, his tongue, or the rough sounds he made as though he were a starving man at a feast.
She splintered, shattering apart and tightening around his fingers so much that he froze inside of her. And that sound he made added to the burning pleasure, a deep groan that came from his chest at the feeling of her coming around him.
He stood, moving her body like she weighed absolutely nothing. He had her pinned to the tree so easily with just a single hand, and with the other, he freed his cock.
She’d only seen it out of the corner of her eye in the bathwater. But now, with that massive beast between her thighs, she felt the slightest bit of nerves. It really was massive. A gigantic cock that his hands somehow made look manageable, with a broad head and a darker purple than the rest of his skin. And then there was all that glinting metal that caught her attention.
He thumbed the scorching head of himself, one clawed finger smoothing over a pearlescent drop. Eight bars pierced through the underside of it. Sixteen circular beads that gave the entire beast an entirely different appearance than she was used to. Would those ridges hurt? She reached between them, trailing her fingers gently along each piercing to get used to them.
“They’ll feel good,” he promised, his voice a rasp. “I’ll make you feel good.”
She had no doubt of that, but she wondered if she’d be able to walk after.
Staring down her own body, she watched as he rubbed that massive head against her pussy. It was so hot . Blunt and swollen, appearing between her thighs as he thrust against her a little harder. Another drop of come appeared on the top, disappearing as he slid it between her folds and something about that made her moan.
She slammed her head back against the tree, shutting her eyes as the sensations danced over her. He notched himself against her, pushing just the slightest. It seemed like he was waiting for something. For her.
But words had long ago failed her. She had no idea how to tell him to keep going, that if he didn’t, she feared she would die.
So she rocked her hips, lifting them, rising so it was easier for him to wedge himself inside her, and pushed down.
The burn.
The stretch.
The ache of just the head of him pushing into her body was a stark contrast to the clenching emptiness in the rest of her. Some part of her wanted him to slam inside her, to get it over with and plunge so deeply that she wouldn’t know where she started and where he ended.
But then he pulled out again, and that emptiness was almost unbearable.
She whimpered, her eyes flicking back open to see him staring down at where they were just joined. Again he pushed, sliding into her just a little farther than the first time. The first bar touched her outer lips, pressing and then sliding into her.
Maia’s eyes rolled back in her head. “Oh my god.”
“Easy, fire hair. You’re doing so well.”
He pulled out again, all the way, leaving her bereft until he moved again.
This time she could feel herself stretching, aching, accommodating the massive length that slid two bars deep into her body. Out again. Three bars.
Her entire existence zeroed into counting how many of those bars had fit inside of her. To the slick glide of him entering and exiting. To her body warping, changing, demanding that she take more of him, no matter how overwhelming it felt. No matter how much more there was. She could count to eight. She could make eight work.
But then he stopped six bars deep, sunk so far inside her that she’d forgotten how to breathe. He hadn’t, though. He leaned forward and pressed their foreheads together, breathing with her as he held himself in place. “That’s as much as you can take, fire hair.”
“More,” she whimpered, grabbing onto his back and trying to convince him to go farther. The bite of pain was something she enjoyed. It felt good , beyond good, like he had reached into her soul and stolen it.
His big hand smoothed down her hair, stopping at the back of her neck where he drew her forward for a soul stealing kiss. “No more today. Someday, you’ll take more. But today, that’s all you get.”
And then he drew back out and slammed back in.
She ceased to be. Even if that was all the cock she got, it was more than enough. He was so big, and she was so fucking full. So stuffed with every thrust in and out, pleasure and pain mingled together.
The thrusts only grew faster, stronger, so much so that she started moaning things that might have made no sense: desire, need, please don’t stop. Words that came from deep inside of her and she didn’t know where they came from.
“That’s it,” he growled. “Tell me what you want, Maia.”
“I want to come,” she groaned.
“You can do better than that.”
And there it was. That wanton, wild creature she never would’ve believed lived inside of her. That woman grew claws and dug them into her very being. “I want to come around your fat cock, Ragnar. Please, please make me come.”
The sound of his pleasure at her words was almost enough to send her tumbling over that edge. The animalistic growl that echoed against her neck made everything in her tighten, tense. And then he was reaching between them. His thumb pressed against her oversensitive clit, rubbing in a circle just like she liked.
She tightened even more, impossibly more. His thrusts stuttered, forced to no longer pound inside of her because he couldn’t move, not with her clenched like that.
What was happening to her? She could feel the orgasm building and building, but why wasn’t it shattering? She’d go mad if it didn’t. Her fingers moved down her body as well, pausing at her belly. She could feel him moving inside her, stretching her. Looking down at her stomach, she watched the bulge of him warping her skin, sliding inside her, out, because she’d stretched to take him that much.
It all shattered. Everything inside of her burst into an orgasm that was so much more than just coming. It unmade her, ruined her for anyone else other than the troll, who froze inside of her as well.
There it was. The groan that she’d wanted to hear. As she clenched and shuddered around him, he poured himself into her as his cock swelled even larger.
Sweaty, clinging to him with every ounce of her last bit of strength, she desperately tried to pull herself together. Even as he slid out of her, every single one of those bars making her sensitive body quake even more. Even as a gush of liquid slid down her thighs that were so weak she couldn’t have stood on her own.
If she’d known this was what it was like to be a troll wife, she would have agreed to do it a long time ago.